New parking machines are to be rolled out across central Dunedin in the coming days as part of the Dunedin City Council's revamp of city parking.
About 150 new pay-and-display machines would be installed in the central city beginning today, covering sites across the council's four new charging zones, council development services manager Kevin Thompson said.
Work to install "cradles" for the new machines was already under way, but the parking machines themselves would remain covered once installed until they all became operational on July 3, Mr Thompson said.
The machines would include the ability to accept payments by credit card or text message, and would lift the total number of pay-and-display machines in the city to 400, he said.
They would end a reprieve for motorists after the council's original preferred provider, Cash Handling Systems (CHS), applied to go into receivership in March.
The company was to have provided the machines by Easter.
The machines were now being supplied by GIS Ltd, an Australasian company with a branch office in Auckland, at a cost to the council of $1.64 million, Mr Thompson said.
The price - the same as agreed with CHS - also covered the cost of two new motor scooters for additional parking wardens, as well as several hand-held ticket-writing machines and new signs, poles and markings.
About 40 older, green parking machines would be phased out over the next two years, and replaced by new machines under a contract yet to be tendered, Mr Thompson said.
Another 200 existing silver machines would be reconfigured to include a credit-card payment option, while the city's remaining "single head" parking meters would be removed as new parking machines were commissioned.
